My Apocalypse
by Caz2y5
Summary: 1st person POV of Dean IN hell. This has been a work of love that i started before the airing of Lazarus Rising. and it has grown into its own monster.


Time worked differently here. Not different really, it didn't run backwards it just seems like a day could drag on for an eternity. But maybe that's like the old saying "time flies when you're having fun." The opposite could be said when each day was spent enduring the tortures of hell. That is probably why each minute that passes seems so unbearably long. But after the first day, the man knew it would only get worse and each day would drag out like the one before. He figured it passed in a similar manner to where it had when he had been alive and breathing, but that was before he had been dragged to this den of nightmares.

The man has no watch, no calendar, nothing to mark the passing of the days or the hours by. He had no recollection of what day it was or how long he had been there. It had to have been a long time though; it certainly felt like it had been forever. It must have definitely been long enough for his loved ones to forget about him, for them to leave him there to rot. Not that the man really ever expected them to be able to save him. This was his punishment and he had to face it alone.

But why shouldn't those he had left behind forget about him and get on with living their lives? His brother could finally go to law school, settle down, and live a nice apple pie life, the kind of picket fence drudgery that he had always dreamed of for himself but would now never have. It was eternally gone from his grasp.

The man thought of all the promises that remained unfulfilled and would remain so. It didn't matter now, this was his sacrifice, and it was something that he knows he has to pay, no matter how high the price. The man had done it for his family and he would endure it for as long as he could and longer. As long as this promise was kept, it didn't matter about any of the others.

The man knew he was no longer the same man he had once been, but the man couldn't recall when the change occurred. Was it always there from that first painful day? Had it been a gradual decline? How much further would he fall before he finally fell?

A crack of lightning rends the sky and rattles the ground with its thunderous cry. It signals the coming of a new day, and with it, uncovers more glorious wonders to be peeled back and revealed. With its brilliant flash it sears the man's skin and stings his eyes blind. It parches his throat with an unquenchable thirst, making it rattle with every in take of breath. The man blinks back tears until his vision returns and waits for the horrors to begin anew.

The hungry hollow in the pit of his stomach aches and he swallows, sandpaper rasping of his Adam's apple sliding up and down as the man realises that he is no longer alone. They remain unseen, but he can hear their whisperings in the darkness. He doesn't know what they are other than a myriad of things mingled together to give physical form to his torment; voices, hands, lips, teeth and other parts that brush against him. The man baulks at the brush of their lips against his fever clamoured skin, the pinching of their fingers and clamping down of teeth on his exposed flesh. They caress and hold him like a lover, abuse him like a dog, whisper lies to try and break his soul. But the man is strong and will not listen. He cannot allow himself to believe their lies.

As they caress him they pull at his limbs, his hair, pinching and biting. Pulling at him until the hooks from which he hangs tear free, rending flesh and muscle, with the staccato snap of bone the man is freed of his perch. Gentle as a mother's embrace they cradle him, rock him and love him. His already pallid skin blanches as their lips press against his. They gently lick away each of the tears that the man cannot stop from rolling down his cheeks. No matter what they want, he refuses to give it to them freely. He forces them to take it from him. But they are legion and he is one soul lost and alone in his own infernal darkness.

They let him struggle, laughing at his efforts. They coo to him, whispering their darkest desires, carnal and bestial. Their pain and hatred spew forth onto him like venom. But the man must endure it, must take everything they throw at him. If he doesn't the man will fall and that must not happen. The man knows what happens to those who submit to their whispers, has seen it first hand. He refuses to lose his soul to them. He will not become like them, so dark and lost, taking joy from the suffering of others, just so they can forget their own. Before the man had come here he had saved people, protected them from monsters like this. Now he had been reduced to the point where he could not even protect himself.

Their touch was like fire and ice. Like dripping hot wax from a candle, they smother him with their heat, their want and their need. They tease at the man with their tongues until their mouths enfold him, his back arching even as he fights the sensations. The heat inside him growing to a crescendo as they hold him down, his face pressed into the filth of the floor as their touches turn from caress to violation.

Long after he is spent, their touch like knives, they lift him to the rack, its boards still slick with his blood from the previous day's ministrations. They bind him hand and foot to its mechanism. He twists slightly not trying to get free; he knows that would be futile. He twists to adjust himself trying to find comfort even though there is none to be found, to prepare for the atrocities he knows he is about to endure.

They move away from him then. Leave him alone in that abominable pit, make him wait. The anticipation is just another aspect, just as much a part of his torture as they are. He lays there drowning in the deathly quiet. The only sound is the thud, thud, thud, of his heart hammering away inside his rib cage, sending the blood boiling through his veins and sweat beading on his skin.

When the man had first found himself here, he had expected to hear the lament of the dammed, the wail of the tortured, fire, and torment. But there had been no sound. Not even the chains rattled as he hung from them. The man had been entirely alone in the vast and barren landscape under the vault of a starless sky. No fires burned in the pits. The only light was a green luminescence that radiated from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Sometimes the darkness bubbled up inside him until he reached the point where he thought he would shatter from the weight of it all. It was in those moments that he would hear the sobs of the tormented, their cries of despair, their pleading for it to end. It only took him a moment to realize he was hearing his own sobs, his own cries, his own pleading.

The man closes his eyes. The waiting is always the worst part and the demons knew it. He wonders how they ever could have once been human. How much they had endured to then inflict it upon others. Waiting alone your mind can wander. It gives you time to think, to regret. You think about the past, the things you have lost or forsaken; the present, the things you have to endure and the future. That was the worst of it. Things were bad but when you started to think, it got worse. What suffering waited for you just behind those closed lids; the human mind was a cruel beast.

When his fears finally reach a crescendo of broiling panic they return to his side, to the rack. They turn its gears until they hear the pop and crack of sinew and bone. Still the man refuses to cry out; he will not give them the satisfaction of hearing his defeat. The man can and will endure it, he has to. The man had to believe he could be saved. The man knows there is no escape from this endless torment but he has to endure it, has to honour the deal, hold up his end of the agreement. It doesn't mean he has to become like them by doing it. The man will do whatever he has to, to endure and remain himself, to remain unchanged.

"_He's_ coming!" They whisper, whipping around him in their excitement, their anticipation at the thought of his blood being spilt. The man cannot show the same enthusiasm so he lies there, just trying to remember to breathe. The man knows from experience that the pain just builds quicker when you hold your breath. They lash at him again this time in anger for not showing the proper etiquette of excitement that _He_ is coming. It doesn't matter, all that matters now is that he remains unbroken, remains human.

_He_ arrives with no pomp or ceremony except that they bound around him like dogs happy to see their master. Coiling around his legs and licking at the backs of his hand, and yet staying clear of the occasional kicks that _He _sends in their direction_._ They show him this adoration not because they love him but because occasionally he pulls himself from his work to throw them the occasional titbit.

_He_ had once been like the man on the rack was, broken and awaiting the caress of the torturers blade. Only where the man still refused to break, _He_ had eventually been broken. _He_ had fought and resisted at first, hell he had fought a lot longer than _He_ expected the man in front of him would, but in the end they had shattered his soul against the rocks of his own doom and there had been no saviour to pick up the pieces. _He_ had taken up the blade and now _He _did to others what had been done to him. Not because _He _was good at it, although _He_ was. No _He_ had taken the up the blade because, god help him, _He_ enjoyed it. _He_ had many more such souls waiting for him on their own racks and _He_ was looking forward to working each of them. But what _He_ could not understand was why they held out as long as they did.

.

The Torturer had a way with the blade. _He_ relished the glint of steel as it cut through flesh and sinew. Even though _He_ was new to this _He_ was a skilled craftsman and _He _took pride in his work. _He _could cut away for hours feeling a sense of unnerving pleasure at the sounds of pain and the drip of blood. A smile would cross his lips at the slightest of whimper from his victim. A whimper would tell him when _He_ had found the sweet spot.

_He_ had never known how much the adrenaline could pump from the simple action of causing others blood to flow. That was probably why _he_ was so good at it. Why they had taken him under their wings and taught _him_ new and glorious ways, ways _he_ never could have imagined. He glorified in the scent and the taste. Their screams of pain making him hard. _He_ didn't even see his victims anymore _he_ just did as he was ordered. knowing what carnal pleasures awaited _him_ as reward

_He_ leans over the shattered bones of the man and offers him the knife, just as it had been offered to him all those years ago. _He_ had held out in the beginning too, been just as certain he would be saved. The smile on his lips twist cruelly as the broken man utters profanities, and refuses the offered blade.

The man refuses to become the dark thing that now towers over him, the thing that had once been a man like him. The man looks at _him_ a black shadow of what _He_ had been before, still human in some aspects and yet you could see the blackness of the demon growing in him with each passing day. It is _His_ eyes that frightened the man the most unlike the demon eyes of his other tormentors. _His_ eyes are not yet black.

The man spits in the face of those who offer him freedom from the rack if he will put others in his place. The man will not, can not do that. But in a sense the man is glad that this torturer is the one standing over him. Sure the torturer is a deft hand at the blade, surgeon-like in his skill, but the man is able to find some comfort in the hope that if _He_ had once endured this torture himself then perhaps _He_ will be willing to make it quick. But hope is a fleeting thing in a place of darkness, easily snuffed out like the flame of a candle.

As the Torturer starts at his task, the broken man rolls his eyes up trying not to look, trying to find something else to focus on other than the torturer's hands as they bend to their tasks. The man wants to squeeze his eyes shut and block out the sight of it but it is always one of the first things that they do, run the sharp blade across the soft flesh and peeling back his eyelids to expose the white of his eyes underneath, leaving him with no way to block it out. Tears well in the corners of the man's eyes, stinging as the salty liquid runs along the open wounds before streaking bloodily down his face.

The man feels the warm gush as the blood begins to flow in earnest. He wishes he could pass out to remove himself from the suffering. His teeth tearing through his bottom lip as he tries to hold back the whimpers of pain. He feels the hands jerking inside him as they explore and tug and pull.

The man lays there as piece by piece he is torn, cut and pulled apart. He watches as the light dances in its myriad of colours to mark the passing of time that never passes. The whispers of his tormentors roar in his ears long after he has no ears to hear them with, till He has no teeth to bite his already gone lips, no fingers to clench into fists. At last, he thinks as it nears the end that would again become the beginning. Soon, the blood that drips into his eyes will obscure his vision.

That's when the man sees it, a pin prick of light far away in the luminous distance. Suddenly the ever burning light, the one constant in this place, flickers with the luminosity of a flare, causing bright hues of colour to radiate and dance as they reflect across the vault of the sky. At first the man is uncertain he has seen it, a different light that grows in the sphere of the sky, like a star. Except it continues growing, fluctuating as it becomes larger, comes closer. After an eternity the light reaches him in the darkness of his own little corner of the world, caressing him with its soft radiance.

For a brief passing of time that feels like a million life times in which the man thinks he has finally gone mad the light fills him with awe, hope, and happiness. It does not burn him or blind him. It's like staring into the sun but the man cannot look away, has no eyelids to close over his eyes. From somewhere deep inside a part of him cries out, a part of the man that can sense that this light is his salvation. He reaches out for it to take him home, to raise him from perdition.

The light washes away all of the darkness, scattering his tormentors like leaves blown before a storm. It washes the whole place clean and white and brilliant. Finally after what feels like an eon has passed the light coalesces into a man, a man with blue eyes and angel wings. The angel smiles, placing a restaining hand on the shoulder of the torturer, he whispers… "Dean."

And then they are gone leaving only the silence and empty void of hell behind them and he is alone, still tied to the rack, trapped in his own eternal damnation.


End file.
